Recently in the news, an elder Tribesman ORDERED a girl to be gang raped!
This took place in a remote village in India.
Sorry to have opened this blog so abruptly. There is no other way to speak this horror other than to just spit it out.

The elder took part in the rape.

The whole village watched and stood by as a young girl was tied and ravaged because she dared to choose her own husband.

My mind has been racing since I read this….my head aching with all the elements that I do not understand.

I have so many questions:
How cruel has this man been in the past?
How many people had he already raped?
How much has he abused his wife?
How many rapes had the other rapists previously committed?

You see, from where I stand an elder does not “all of a sudden” decide to become a rapist.
And sane men do not just blindly follow an order to gang rape a young girl.

It is VERY likely that the elder has been a bully for quite a while AND he has gotten away with it.

No one in the village reported him for his cruelty and lack of basic humanity and so he grew in power and pride and found himself in a powerful position where he could “make” a group of men gang rape a young girl.

Did those men have a choice? YES, they did. They could have all said NO… this will not happen.

It was heart breaking to read that the village women blamed the girl for the horrific acts of the elder and the other rapists.

My heart wants to know how many other rapes and violence against women has been happening in this village that has up until now, gone unnoticed. How many women have been suffering in silence? Perhaps this instance of horrific acts will help to pry open a little more the plight of women and girls. Just like the gang rape on the bus in New Delhi where the victim died and the furor against these practices started. Perhaps this instance will further that fight.

I can only hope.

What is our takeaway here?

A bully needs to be reported at the first infraction lest he be voted in an elder at a later date. In this country, report the abusers lest they become our political leaders!

Speak up for your rights and keep speaking up….speak loudly and often and never shut up.
And MEN…
If someone tells you to rape someone say in a loud voice,
I AM NOT A RAPIST…and then report them to the authorities.

Please let us bring back humanity to the human race.

Love and light and compassion to all women who have suffered rape,
Indrani

A while back, I was having a lovely conversation with a dear friend. She was telling me about a discussion she had with one of her siblings. They were talking about what kind of car her sister was going to buy.

It turned out that the sister had been somewhat of the family hippie and never really took advice from anyone. It seemed that she was always in some kind of trouble. So when my friend found out that her sister was about to purchase a new car she picked up the telephone and did what any sister would do, right? She told her sister exactly what car she should get.

To be fair, she had given her sister lots of advice before but the poor girl never had the wits to take it. So here she was again, giving her advice….but this time she was REALLY forceful!

“I mean, why can’t she see that her decisions are absolutely disastrous and flighty? So what if she is an MD….she’s not married and is almost 35 years old and her eggs must be rotted by now!”

I listened for what seemed like an eternity and bit my tongue many times to keep myself from saying something like “Who do you think you are to try to run her life?” My tongue was scarred from the bites! Anyways, I digress.

After about 30 minutes she said, “Well, she finally came to her senses, listened to me and bought the car I told her to buy. It was a damn good thing I put my foot down, right?”

Was that an invitation for me to speak?
Yes, I think it was.

So I said, “Well, it was not so much as you putting your foot down, but you offering your own views and her making her own decisions.”

This was NOT the response she wanted….so she took a loud, deep breath and said, “Do you notice how much you are playing semantics these days?”

To this I replied, “Well, my response took the focus from your actions and put it on your sister’s actions….I do not think its semantics, but I can tell that you see it that way.”

Ok, now THAT was semantics!

I was not “playing” semantics with my first response; rather I was trying to show the difference in the energy between her “putting my foot down” and her sister “making her own decisions”. The advice offered may have persuaded the ultimate decision, but why take credit for that?

It feels so much better, energy wise, to offer the gifts of our own experiences rather than “putting our foot down”.
How old does a person have to be to care about whose foot is being put where?

Kids and abused people come to mind, when I think about the answer to the above question.
You can put your foot down and take away a teenagers car, telephone or x-box.
You can put your foot down and not let your child wear pajamas to school.
You can put your foot down and tell your wife that she must dress a certain way and HOPE that she “obeys” you. If she does obey you, is it because she loves you and is doing it to please you or is it because she is fearful that if she does not “obey” you will lash out and abuse her?

So, what does “putting your foot down” really mean?

If you are the foot putter downer, I invite you to try giving the gifts of your experience instead of ramming stuff down people’s throats.

If you are the person who gets the brunt of the all the feet upon them, I invite you to ask what accepting all of those dogmas will do for you.

I guess you can call it semantics, but since our words really do reflect how we see the world, it is worth investigating the words that fall out of our mouths and paying attention to the energy that goes with those words.

Do you remember your kids ever screaming “you’re not the boss of me”?
The fact of the matter is you were the boss of them. They knew it and you knew it.
Who have you given the power to be the boss of you?

Who is the boss of you?

Bosses have power.
Bosses tell us what to do.
They hold our future in their hand.
They can fire us.
They can choose to compliment us or chew us out.
We feel that we must behave a certain way around them for fear of a disapproving look or a nasty comment.

Now I would like you to review the previous statements and change the
words “bosses” and “they” to I. Change “us” to me.

So the first would read:

I have power.

I am not asking you to “believe” the reworded sentences…I’m just asking you to notice how they make you feel.
Do they make you squirm?
Do they make you sit up and take notice?

When we give our power away, it is likely that we have done it for a long time. We may have allowed our parents to make important decisions for us, long after our childhoods. We may allow our superiors or elders to tell us what to think and what to believe.
We may never dream to question the status quo.
These are learned behaviors.
If we can learn something then we can unlearn it.

Are there things you want to unlearn?
Are there people from whom you want to withdraw your power?
Are you ready to be the ONLY BOSS of you?

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